Machu Picchu

In the morning, we took the tourist train from Ollanta to Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu. The train ride was about 1.5 hours with beautiful views of the mountains and the Urubamba river. You have to have reserved seats for the train so it’s very comfortable.

Aguas Calientes is strictly a tourist town for all the people who want to visit Machu Picchu. It’s quite picturesque, surrounded by high mountains, with a river in the middle of town and several rope bridges to cross it. There are tons of restaurants, bars, craft stores and a huge crafts market.

We got off the train, walked through the town to our hotel, left the luggage and got on the bus to Machu Picchu. There is only one company that operates shuttle buses from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu and this is the only way to get there. The buses are labeled “ecological”, but we didn’t ask if they were electric or ran on natural gas or something else. The trip takes 40 minutes to go up the mountain on a zig-zag unpaved road with a deep ravine on one side. The trip down only takes about 20 minutes.

When we got to Machu Picchu, our guide Rony took us to the highest point first. We had to climb what seemed endless steep stone stairs. When we got to the top, the view almost took our breath away. In front of us was the classic view of Machu Picchu with Wayna Picchu in the back, the view that you can see in albums, pictures, postcards… It is spectacular. We spent 4 hours walking around this amazing place and listening to Rony’s explanations about its history. It’s impossible to describe it; pictures do it better.
We were lucky because we came in the afternoon and stayed until closing time so there weren’t as many people there. We had some places totally to ourselves.

At 4 pm (closing time), we took the bus back, walked to the hotel, checked into our rooms and went out to dinner. we were starving since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

The internet here is so slow that I wasn´t able to upload pictures. Maybe in Cusco...